[xmca] DA-L2: II

["James P. Lantolf" <jpl7@psu.edu>]

1.We appreciate Andy's comment that several 
scholars associated with Marxian theory have 
argued that the criterion for truth is found in 
practice. However, we don't agree that Marx 
"never talks about the criterion of truth." While 
Marx might not have actually used the exact 
wording "criterion of truth" his Second Thesis on 
Feuerbach does indeed address the issue rather 
directly. In the words of Sanchez Vasquez (1977, 
p. 120) "Thesis II is significant because it 
reveals a new dimension of the role of practice 
in knowledge; it provides not only the object of 
knowledge, but also the criterion of its truth." 
Sanchez goes on to expand on this point in 
greater detail.
2.Clarification of "natural" in our discussion of 
Education. Perhaps the way we phrased things is 
the reason for Mike's concern and justifiably so. 
We were certainly not saying that cultural 
concepts are acquired through a 
natural/biological process (e.g., we in no way 
buy into Chomsky's view of language acquisition 
as the mere triggering of pre-specified 
knowledge. In fact, in Lantolf and Thorne, 2006, 
we support Tomasello's usage-based approach to 
acquisition, including non-instructed adult 
language acquisition). We were trying to reflect 
Vygotsky's position that culture, whether 
everyday or formal education, empowers humans to 
gain control over processes that are part of our 
natural biological endowment. Here is a nice 
quote from A. N. Leontiev that reflects our 
orientation with specific reference to language: 
"language is the objective product of the 
activity of previous generations. In the process 
of development, the child appropriates language. 
This means that in the child specifically human 
abilities and functions are formed: the ability 
to speak and to understand, the functions of 
hearing and articulating spoken language. 
Naturally, these abilities and functions are not 
innate; rather they emerge in ontogenesis. What 
makes them emerge? Above all, the existence of 
language in the environment. With regard to the 
biological characteristics [e.g., human auditory 
apparatus, human vocal apparatus] inherited by 
the child, they constitute only the necessary 
conditions to enable the formation of these 
abilities and functions." (Principles of Mental 
Development and the Problem of Mental 
Retardation. 1959.)
3.With regard to learning L2s, we don't agree 
with David that learning of vocabulary is a 
linear process. It isn't simply learning new 
labels for concepts we already have in our first 
language (we aren't saying that David makes this 
claim, but many in the L2 literature have made 
this assumption, although, to be sure, things are 
beginning to change). Learning that the Spanish 
word for mother is madre, as Vygotsky argued, is 
the beginning not the end of the process. There 
is a rich set of cultural entailments that one 
must appropriate to fully know the Spanish word 
and these are radically different from 
Anglo-American concept of mother. On this topic 
see the 1997 dissertation by Howard Grabois 
(1997). Love and power. Word associations, 
lexical organization and second language 
acquisition.
4.Gaining control over the feature of aspect in a 
language such as French or Spanish is indeed all 
about development. By control we mean the ability 
to consciously understand the concept of aspect 
and the ability to deploy that concept as a 
semiotic tool to make and convey the kinds of 
meanings one wants to make and convey in specific 
communicative circumstances. This does not mean 
using the concept in precisely the way native 
speakers do. It means the ability to use the 
concept in perhaps innovative ways. Indeed, the 
average native speaker (i.e., one who has not 
study language formally in school) do not have 
conscious and sophisticated understanding of the 
conceptual features (grammatical, lexical, 
pragmatic, discursive) of their language. 
Yanez-Prieto (2008) On literature and the secret 
art of invisible words : Teaching literature 
through language (Ph.D. dissertation), among 
other things, documents how L2 learners gain 
control over Spanish verbal aspect and use it to 
create communicatively powerful texts. One 
student, for instance, relates a story about her 
mother's illness using imperfective and 
perfective in what would otherwise seem to be a « 
non-native » manner. Normally, imperfective is 
used to set background information (set the 
stage) for a story and perfective is used to 
relate the major events of the story. The student 
intentionally used the imperfective to relate the 
major events of the story as a way of drawing the 
reader into the action as if it were unfolding 
before one's eyes. It seems to us that this type 
of control of a key temporal concept shows 
genuine development.
5.The examples that David provides deal with 
children learning an L2, this may or may not be a 
different process from adults learning an L2. 
Indeed, a recent book by one of the leading 
neurolinguists working on bilingual acquisition, 
Michel Paradis in his (2009) book (Declarative 
and Procedural Determinants of Second Languages) 
provides empirical evidence to support the 
position we are arguing for regarding learning 
languages in educational settings. In a nutshell, 
he proposes that adult language learning rarely 
entails the same kind of implicit, non-conscious 
learning that occurs in the case of L1 and 
possibly L2 learning in childhood. Instead, it 
involves conscious and intentional learning of 
explicit knowledge, which can never convert to 
implicit knowledge. This knowledge can, however, 
be used in an accelerated way in oral and written 
communicative activities. We integrate Paradis's 
model with Vygotsky's approach to formal 
education in our new book on instructed second 
language learning.
6.We have always interpreted "cultural" in 
sociocultural as a historical formation. It plays 
a major role in our approach to language 
education, since for one thing we have to 
confront the language educational history of our 
students, who, by the time they enter university 
language courses, have, in most cases, already 
internalized knowledge of a particular language 
that is by and large inappropriate, incomplete 
and in many cases wrong. To even begin the 
educational process, we have to first bring out 
the history and then get the students to confront 
it and recognize that in most cases it is 
problematic.

Jim & Matt


--
__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca